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Sunday, October 29, 2006

Alice Brinkman, a local fiber artist periodically holds Days to Dye For on Saturday mornings in her studio. Yesterday, we played with discharge, using Jacquard discharge paste and a Thiox bath. I started with some black Kona cotton, turquoise hand-dyed cotton and a commercially dyed purple silk scarf.

Is it because Halloween is around the corner that the pole-wrapped shibori piece on the left looks a little a skeleton?

The piece on the right was clamped with a pair of wood rectangle shapes. Both went into the Thiox bath, along with a purple silk scarf with was also clamped. The scarf when back into the bath, after it was unclamped to produce the gradated effect in the circles.

I also screen-printed both kinds of cotton fabrics with the discharge paste using a silk screens. Here is the black Kona cotton, screened with the kanji for Peace.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

This quilt is said to date from 1820. It came from Maine and hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, in the Folk Art room.

It's made from cotton fabrics with wool embroidery that looked like punch needle. The motifs range from flowers and animals to portraits thought to represent family members to soldiers on horseback. (click images for larger versions)

I'm not sure anyone would consider this an Art Quilt today, but I think that the quilter who designed and made it in 1820 was surely an artist.

When I was packing and moving and unpacking last month, I realized just how many UFOs I have–suddenly my stash didn't seem so large because I seem to have just as many boxes of finished and almost finished tops, sets of swap blocks, unfinished class projects and other works in progress.

Here's an oldie but goodie.

60 inch square throw

The scrappy 4-patch stars were from a swap I hosted another time that *life* happened to the swap hostess . . . me. The blocks arrived at my house in California not long before I had to drop everything and fly to Michigan because my dad was in the CCU with a mystery illness adn was failing fast. Although I did send a note to my swappers letting them know what was going on, and another, the following week, when I was still in Michigan, one swapper kept insisting that someone return her blocks immediately. At the same time, she sent accusatory emails to the powers that be and so I was getting demanding email messages from them, too, adding to my already frightened and stressed out existence.

Yes, sometimes *life* happens to the swap hostess.

The backing is also pieced and ready to go. Can I finally finish it in time for the holidays and leave the memory of that selfish, mean-spirited person behind?